A quick story of a red-letter-day for me from the days of Townes’s shack down by the Harpeth River outside of Franklin, Tennessee.
The first time I shot a gun. A real gun, not my Red Rider BB gun.
I was about 8 and Steve Earle and I had both been exiled from the festivities. I was just a kid and sometimes the older writers hazed him mercilessly. And he was only 15 years older than me so in that day and age I was almost like a kid brother to him.
Anyway, the two of us stormed off from the shack with that replica Colt he sang about in "Devil's Right Hand." I already knew the song — he and a couple of his friends had set up an electric band in mama’s living room and debuted it one night for mama, my stepfather, my little brother and me, much to the chagrin of our square neighbors on Cadillac Drive in blue-collar suburban Nashville.
And he told me he would teach me how to shoot it that morning. The Devil’s Right Hand in my little hand! For real!
So we set up a target and he handed me that big ol' gun, which felt like a 50 pound weight in my hand. He stood right behind me as I raised the heavy pistol, aimed, and fired..
BOOM. The recoil almost took off my ear. I came nowhere near hitting the target...
Steve was cackling in that jackal-like way he had...
"Nova," he said. "Dirty Harry you ain't."